The Bari forward has completed the three-year university course applied to sport. Now he’s hunting for a historic promotion
In the week that can lead to Serie A, Mirco Antenucci wanted to celebrate significant personal satisfaction via social media. The Bari striker, aged 38, has in fact recently become a doctor of psychology (but with a distinctly footballing tinge): the three-year course of study he completed at the eCampus telematic university is, in fact, in “Sport and football management”. An address included in the faculty of psychology but preparatory – reads the university website – “to acquire managerial, legal and historical-cultural knowledge aimed at managing sports organizations”. An academic qualification consistent with the projects that the red and white striker has for when he stops playing, a moment that has not yet been scheduled despite his contract expiring.
Neo d.s.
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Last March, together with his partner and captain Valerio Di Cesare, Antenucci in fact obtained the qualification as sporting director in Coverciano. A stage of which Di Cesare himself recounted the background: “We had the exam the day after the match against Venice (won 1-0, it was March 1st), Mirco and I left the stadium immediately and left immediately with a bus to arriving in Florence and during the trip we had anxiety. In the end everything went well, doing it with him was special because I consider him a brother”. In the meantime, however, the fruition of the title will have to wait. Because the priority remains the field and a final for which the red and white people are boiling (San Nicola for Sunday evening is already sold out).
Final anxiety
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Managing the wait, in these moments, is a little lack of sleep, a little attention to detail. Those that Antenucci – thanks to the support and love of his wife Eleonora and the splendid three girls, Camilla, Sofia and Alice – has never stopped caring for, because otherwise he would not have gotten to enjoy his second youth in Bari. With the mental strength and organizational ability to reconcile study (university and to become sports director) and work commitments. The Molise striker married Bari in Serie C, in the summer of 2019, leaving behind Serie A and the golden cycle of Spal di Semplici. In the previous three seasons at San Nicola he scored abundantly, but he also had to digest the bitterness of two playoffs that ended badly, before the liberating promotion a year ago with Mignani. In the rediscovered B, this season, 9 goals and an essential contribution of experience and attachment to a cause that he now feels on his skin. In the semifinal against Südtirol he started in the first leg, to then remain on the bench – thanks to the development of the match – in the magical night in which San Nicola vibrated as in historically the most beautiful days. Obviously the photo with the thesis was inundated with compliments from the Bari fans, among whom more than someone asked him for advice on how to manage anxiety. The indirect answer is between the lines of the aphorism that Antenucci has published in the caption (attributed to Joseph Addison, English writer and politician of the 18th century): “If you want to be successful in life, make perseverance your best friend, experience your wise counselor and hope your guardian angel”.
June 5, 2023 (change June 5, 2023 | 19:22)
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